Jane Eyre Character Quotes

I told him in a new series of whispers, that he might as well buy me a gold gown with a silver bonnet at once: I should certainly never venture to wear his choice…the more he bought me, the more my cheek burned with a sense of annoyance and degradation…if I had ever so small independecy; I never can bear being dressed like a doll by Mr Rochester, or sitting like a second Danae with the golden shower falling daily round me…He smiled; and I thought his smile was such as a sultan might … bestow on a slave his gold and gems had enriched.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 24. After agreeing to marry Rochester, Jane is uncomfortable during a shopping trip with him as he insists on showering her with luxurious gifts and clothes. She has no wish to be Rochester’s decorated possession and a trophy wife. She uses apt simile images to describe her displeasure – “dressed like a doll” and “sitting like a second Danae.” Jane wants to be free and independent, not a bejeweled slave and second Danae. In Greek mythology Danae was an Argive princess locked in a bronze chamber by her father. He only freed her after Zeus disguised himself as a shower of gold, cascaded through the roof of her prison and impregnated her.

“I only want an easy mind, sir; not crushed by crowded obligations. Do you remember what you said of Céline Varens? – of the diamonds, the cashmeres you gave her? I will not be your English Céline Varens. I shall continue to act as Adèle’s governess; by that I shall earn my board and lodging, and thirty pounds a year besides. I’ll furnish my own wardrobe out of that money, and you shall give me nothing but – ”
“Well, but what?”
“Your regard; and if I give you mine in return, that debt will be quit.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 24. Jane’s struggle for independence continues. Jane is a very modern woman, an emancipated 19th century feminist who challenges domination by men and the subordination of women in Victorian society. Here she tells Rochester that after they marry she will continue to work as Adele’s governess and earn her keep. She sees herself as equal to Rochester and Adele and wishes to pay her own way.

My future husband was becoming to me my whole heart, and more than the world – almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for his creature of whom I had made an idol.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 24. Jane totally worships Rochester. Her obsession with him is even more important to her than her need for God or religion. He has become her idol and almost her “hope of heaven.” Loving Rochester is her new religion. Jane uses a nature simile to compare her losing sight of her religion and God to an eclipse of “the broad sun.” Such an eclipse would plunge the world into darkness, hinting at Rochester’s disturbing secret and how he may lead Jane down a morally murky path. A dark outcome to Jane’s worship at the altar of their love is being foreshadowed. An older Jane looking back on this moment admits that her judgment is clouded by her strong passion for Rochester.

As I looked up at them, the moon appeared momentarily in that part of the sky which filled their fissure; her disk was blood-red and half overcast; she seemed to thrown on me one bewildered, dreary glance, and buried herself again instantly in the deep drift of cloud. The wind fell, for a second, round Thornfield; but far away over wood and water poured a wild, melancholy wail: it was sad to listen to, and I ran off again.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 25. There is an excellent example of the use of pathetic fallacy to reflect a change of mood. As Jane looks at the split halves of the chestnut tree, she notices that the weather is turning gloomy. The blood-red moon is half overcast in deep cloud and the wind gives off a melancholy wail. Jane finds it sad to listen to and runs off. This is foreshadowing of the disaster that is about to happen at Jane and Rochester’s wedding.

On sleeping, I continued in dreams the idea of a dark and gusty night. I continued also the wish to be with you, and experienced a strange, regretful consciousness of some barrier dividing us. During all my first sleep, I was following the windings of an unknown road; total obscurity environed me; rain pelted me; I was burdened with the charge of a little child: a very small creature, too young and feeble to walk, and which shivered in my cold arms, and wailed piteously in my ear…I dreamt another dream, sir: that Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin, the retreat of bats and owls. I thought that of all the stately front nothing remained but a shell-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking…I still carried the unknown little child: I might not lay it down anywhere, however tired were my arms…I must retain it. I heard the gallop of a horse at a distance on the road; I was sure it was you; and you were departing for many years for a distant country. I climbed the thin wall with frantic perilous haste, eager to catch one glimpse of you from the top: the stones rolled from under my feet, the ivy branches that I grasped gave way, the child clung round my neck in terror, and almost strangled me…I bent forward to take a last look; the wall crumbled; I was shaken; the child rolled from my knee, I lost my balance, fell, and woke.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 25. As they are about to be married, Jane tells Rochester about two dreams she had the previous night. In the first she is on a long and dark road trying to reach Rochester, while a small terrified and crying child clings to her neck and impedes her progress. The second dream takes her to Rochester’s Gothic ancestral manor, destroyed and in ruin, and she loses her balance and drops the child as Rochester rides away from her. Jane’s prophetic dreams are foreshadowing of the end of Thornfield Hall when Bertha sets fire to the place, and also of trouble ahead in her relationship with Rochester. Jane has the ability to foresee the future in her dreams.

Fearful and ghastly to me – oh, sir, I never saw a face like it! It was a discoloured face – it was a savage face…the lips were swelled and dark; the brow furrowed: the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes. Shall I tell you of what it reminded me?…Of the foul German spectre – the Vampyre.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 25. The night before Jane and Rochester’s wedding is an eventful and frightening one for her, as a fearful-looking woman enters her bedroom. Jane doesn’t know yet that it is Bertha Mason, Rochester’s wife. Jane describes her features in monstrous and supernatural terms, with savage face, swollen lips and bloodshot eyes, and reminding her of a vampire! Bertha Mason, a mad woman of Creole heritage kept under lock and key in Rochester’s attic, is demonized here.

The house cleared, I shut myself in, fastened the bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded – not to weep, not to mourn, I was yet too calm for that, but – mechanically to take off the wedding dress and replace it by the stuff gown I had worn yesterday, as I thought, for the last time.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 26. After having her heart broken at the altar and learning that Mr. Rochester has a wife who is mad, Jane calmly takes off her wedding dress. She metaphorically shuts herself in, closing down her emotions. The word “mechanically” emphasizes her machine-like, emotionless response to her happiness being undone. Jane will sacrifice happiness with Rochester rather than her moral principles.

Jane Eyre, who has been an ardent, expectant woman – almost a bride – was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate…I looked at my love; that feeling which was my master’s – which he had created; it shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr. Rochester’s arms – it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted – confidence destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had been, for he was not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe vice to him; I would not say he had betrayed me; but the attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea, and from his presence I must go: THAT I perceived well.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 26. Jane speaks about herself in the third person, so deeply affected is she by her ordeal. She has learned that Mr. Rochester cannot marry her because he is already married. Rochester has gone from being her religious idol to someone sadly too human. Following his deception she feels alone and lost once more. Using a simile, she likens the love she has for Rochester to a sick and anguished child suffering in a cold cradle. She refuses to label him a betrayer or wicked, but says that he failed her by being less than truthful. Jane’s moral principles have decided that she must leave him.

My hopes were all dead – struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid – corpses that could never revive.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 26. To a despairing Jane it is the death of hope, when her wedding to Rochester is called off because of his mad wife Bertha. In a Biblical allusion she compares their love to the dead first-born of the Egyptians who perished in the tenth plague.

Self-abandoned, relaxed and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, I felt the torrent come; to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint, longing to be dead. One idea only still throbbed life-like within me – a remembrance of God.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 26. When Jane learns the shocking truth about Rochester’s wife she returns to the solitude of her room. The metaphor of a Biblical deluge is used to convey Jane’s emotional anguish and feelings of loss. The flood is seen as divine punishment for Rochester’s sin against God and Jane’s weakness in loving him more than religion.

Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round and seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall, I asked, “What am I to do?”
But the answer my mind gave – “Leave Thornfield at once” – was so prompt, so dread, that I stopped my ears…I could not bear such words now. “That I am not Edward Rochester’s bride is the least part of my woe,” I alleged, “that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and found them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master; but that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable. I cannot do it.”
But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it and foretold that I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me; and Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. When Jane wakens in the afternoon, her mind is in torment is in torment. After finding out that Rochester already has a wife, she faces a difficult and painful decision. She has to decide whether to live with a married man she is passionately in love with, or leave him forever. Her conscience wins over passion and she decides to leave Thornfield immediately.

Reader! – I forgave him at the moment, and on the spot. There was such deep remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such manly energy in his manner; and, besides, there was such unchanged love in his whole look and mien – I forgave him all; yet not in words, not outwardly; only at my heart’s core.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. After Jane’s wedding to Rochester is interrupted by the announcement that he already has a wife, he asks will she ever forgive him. Jane sees the deep remorse and love in his eyes and she forgives him – not in words, but in her heart. However that doesn’t mean she is going to remain under the same roof with him.

“The paroxysms, when my wife is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on – ”
“Sir,” I interrupted him, “you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady: you speak of her with hate – with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel – she cannot help being mad.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Rochester’s rage is directed at his wife Blanche. He has no sympathy for her, to him she’s the monster. Even though, like him, she is the victim of an arranged marriage, he displays his hated for her. Jane reproaches Rochester for speaking badly about Bertha.

“Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don’t know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?”
“I do indeed, sir.”
“Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still…you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. After the discovery of his mad wife, Rochester is desperate to hold onto Jane and her love. She wonders out loud would she suffer the same fate if she went mad like Bertha. Rochester assures her of his love, promising that she would as dear to him in sickness and in pain. He makes passionate and romantic declarations of his deep affection, metaphorically describing Jane as his treasure. After these words he pleads with her to move to him to a villa in the south of France, where she will be Mrs. Rochester “both virtually and nominally.”

“Now for the hitch in Jane’s character,” he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. “The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble! By God! I long to exert a fraction of Samson’s strength, and break the entanglement like tow!”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Jane is resisting Rochester’s plea to Jane to leave England with him for the south of France, where they can live as man and wife. The “hitch” in Jane’s character is her moral code, which won’t allow her be Rochester’s mistress as his wife is still alive. The reel of silk he talks of is a metaphor for the smooth and loving relationship they have had until now. The knot in the reel is Jane’s morality and Rochester wishes that he had the strength of Sampson to untie it.

I have for the first time found what I can truly love – I have found you. You are my sympathy – my better self – my good angel – I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you – and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. In this passage a very emotional Rochester passionately reaffirms his love for Jane. He is trying to persuade her to stay after the disaster of their abandoned wedding. Rochester uses powerful metaphorical images, comparing Jane to his good angel and saying that they are bound together and fused in one by the strong flame of passion. Some of the most romantic lines in all of literature are to be found in Jane Eyre. This is one of those passages.

I was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals. Terrible moment: full of struggle, blackness, burning! Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved; and him who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped: and I must renounce love and idol. One drear word comprised my intolerable duty – “Depart!”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. It takes all of Jane’s moral strength to break free from the grasp of Rochester’s charms and the power of their love. A metaphorical “hand of fiery iron” has her in its grasp. But her moral duty commands that she leave Thornfield and turn her back on love and the man she has worshiped like an idol.

Feeling…clamoured wildly. “Oh comply!” it said, “Think of his misery, think of his danger – look at his state when left alone…soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?”
Still indomitable was the reply – “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God, sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad – as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour, stringent are they; inviolate they shall be…They have a worth – so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane – quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot!”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Jane is almost persuaded to give in to love and desire and remain with Rochester. Her mind and heart are in turmoil and conflict over the battle between what is right and wrong. Rochester, who is legally married to Bertha Mason, wants her to stay. Jane feels tested, admitting that her veins are metaphorically “running fire” with passion for Rochester. She also longs for a real family and sense of belonging – “Who in the world cares for you?” she asks herself. But she believes strongly that she would lose her self-respect if she were to agree to be Rochester’s mistress. In the end Jane’s moral principles win the internal debate that is raging in her head. She decides to abide by God’s law and leave Thornfield, even if that means being “solitary,” “friendless” and “unsustained.”
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